I've had multiple situations where I did answer (honestly, too - before I knew any better) the "dreaded" question up front and had the recruiter tell me: "Wow. You must work for a really great company! We can't even come close to matching that." Process ended right there, countless time saved. So, as with all things, YMMV.
Salary Negotiation
61–70 of 419 posts
Re: Salary Negotiation
#62We're really trying to nail a good way to deal with salary negotiations when onboarding people, at GrantTree - one that gets out of this "gotcha" approach to salary. So far the best we've figured out is to be the first ones to name a number, and be super-transparent about how we arrived at that number. The reasoning is that "in a salary negotiation the first person to quote a number loses", so since we (as the employ…
I've struggled with this a lot. I used to believe in making it a negotiation. The more I've seen, I've switched to paying for the position. Unless hard negotiation is part of the job description, it shouldn't be rewarded. I've also found that rewarding hard negotiators pushes companies down the path of paying men more than women for the same job. If you can't stay in business without underpaying a lot of people, your…
Without salary negotiation, the company gets to choose the price. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley has shown that it is willing to collude to keep that price down. Therefore, when companies argue that they're banning salary negotiation to "promote equality", you should assume that this equality is merely a gimmick to hide the true purpose: lower wages.
If there really is a difference in negotiating ability between women and men, it would seem far more beneficial to teach women how to negotiate for a fair wage rather than abolish the entire thing altogether. In fact, teach all employees to quantify their abilities and how much value they will provide to their employer. Demonstrate that if companies are unwilling to pay them a fair wage, that they should not devalue their employment.
But the most recent steps toward banning negotiation will ultimately hurt all employees. When companies like Apple, Google, and other Silicon Valley companies agree not to hire employees from each other, and threaten to replace tech workers in the US with less-expensive H1B visas, we should question their true motives. This newest idea of "banning negotiation" is nothing more than another tactic used by a profit-maximizing entity to reduce costs.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead, we run a pay evaluation process internally, including feedback about the value of the role and the person from all the people who interviewed the candidate. We publish all that feedback, as well as the suggestion/reasoning of our pay trustees (a group of people who use that feedback to try to place the candidate on our pay scale) None of those factors are why someone is worth $X salary. You say I'm worth $X.…
> You say I'm worth $X. I go get a job offer for $Y. If $Y > $X, you were mistaken. Not necessarily. The first employer says I'm worth $X to them . The fact that I may be worth more than $X to another employer is not a contradiction. In general, there is nothing "wrong" with a particular employer and applicant being unable to agree on a mutually satisfying salary. It doesn't necessarily mean either party made a mista…
According to standard economic theory though, the fact that someone says "I'm worth $X to them" is completely irrelevant and, because the transaction never happened, never becomes data. That's how market rate is determined and generally why D/S curves only have 1 intersection point - the point at which the transaction occurs.
The only data point that matters is the one where you got hired and started receiving paychecks, all others are not factors at all.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume everyone starting or working for a for-profit business is primarily (though not solely ) motivated to make money for themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn't be starting or working at a for-profit business.
That assumption doesn't bear out in practice, in my experience. There are plenty of people who believe that for-profit businesses can also achieve great, positive purposes in the world, and want to be a part of it. Cases in point: Tesla and SpaceX. They aren't charities. They are very purposeful.
Charity vs. for-profit is a false dichotomy. A charity is a specific form of non-profit. In addition, there is the (relatively new) benefit corporation which, while technically for-profit, has explicit non-financial goals.
That said, nothing about being motivated by money means you can't have a purpose as well. That's why I was careful to draw a distinction between "solely" and "primarily". Making money while also improving the world is just enlightened self-interest.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#65I've had multiple situations where I did answer (honestly, too - before I knew any better) the "dreaded" question up front and had the recruiter tell me: "Wow. You must work for a really great company! We can't even come close to matching that." Process ended right there, countless time saved. So, as with all things, YMMV.
Same here. As soon as I say what I make recruiters usually congratulate me on making what I make and won't call me back. So recruiters are only good for run of the mill, entry level folks, not really for highly skilled or specialized developers.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#66This just seems like a walkthrough how to educate a shitty manager who got their "business-degree" from dilbert comic strips. The last thing a manager wants to do is to lowball a guy who's performance depends on his own good faith. If I have to explain to the manager why this is a bad idea and why he is putting me at disadvantage while keeping key information from me and using sleazy tactics he saw in the "boiler roo…
He doesn't even have to hang out with peers, one simple search across some popular job site nowadays (e.g. glassdoor) will immediately land you with a decent salary amount for your desired position. We've already entered the brave new world where the concept "salary is private information" is dead, and, if one is a developer active on Github (or other OSS platform), then the concept "my work portfolio is private" is also dead.
So you're absolutely right, the worst thing for a hiring manager and a potential employee to do is set themselves up into adversarial positions of who can best manipulate and "break" the other person first. Because a company built with employees and management who can't trust each other, and are in constant underground wars to gouge the most out of each other, is bound to get trounced by competitor companies in the open market
Re: Salary Negotiation
#67What follows is an honest salary determination process, where no party has incentive to lie. It is also very fast. The rules are as follows. (Can't remember where I read about this.) The company and the candidate write on a piece of paper a salary. The company should write the number above which it is not willing to pay the candidate. The candidate writes the number under which she/he is not willing to work for that…
you still have a strong incentive to lie, do you not? Since the final salary is the average of the two numbers, employers want to go as low as they can and prospects want to go as high as they can.
in fact, this system punishes honesty even more than the current one -- if I am honest and the other person is dishonest, the dishonest person wins because they will pull the average in the direction they want and I get a worse deal than if we were both honest.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#68Let me share my horror story -- I fell for a company that offered me the same salary (no raise despite big promotion.) Then, he (Division CTO of Fortune 500 medical company) started subtracting salary from this baseline for all my "benefits" like free shuttles, 401k matching, etc. I was supposed to take the lower wage in exchange for amazing work, 3 fully paid conferences a year, yada yadda.
Two months into joining, the shuttle went from free to paid. Ouch. Then, the manager expected me to stay late 3x a week, which meant i could not even take the shuttle 3x a week, and instead have to take a taxi. Still not enough salary to buy a car + insurance + parking. Then policy changed and 401k match disappeared. Finally, policy changed and all conference reimbursements ended. Final blow -- my PDP is tied to 3 conference posters a year, so i pay out of pocket for travel/registration/hotel.
By the way, the work is great, but i'm paying so much out of pocket that i'm getting the hell out of there. Sucks for me. Sucks for the manager too -- I spend half the day now doing eLance projects.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If your main concern is getting paid as much as possible then we're probably not the right place for you to work anyway" That kind of phrasing is generally code for, "We pay crap wages and expect you to live at work."
Generally, perhaps - not in our case. We pay what we (meaning, the staff, who decide their own pay) believe to be a good wage, and we have excellent work-life balance - we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months (which are pretty hard apparently). And we have remote work, flexible working hours, etc.
> we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months
"I was 20 minutes late because I had to take my newborn to the hospital and they only gave me a written warning!"
>And we have remote work
"On the fifth wednesday of every month I can work from home!"
>flexible working hours
"I worked from 9am to 10pm yesterday so I get to come in at 10am to 10pm today!"
GrantTree might be one of the few outliers here and if so I congratulate you, but this is typically what employers mean when they say those sort of things.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#70We're really trying to nail a good way to deal with salary negotiations when onboarding people, at GrantTree - one that gets out of this "gotcha" approach to salary. So far the best we've figured out is to be the first ones to name a number, and be super-transparent about how we arrived at that number. The reasoning is that "in a salary negotiation the first person to quote a number loses", so since we (as the employ…
Instead, we run a pay evaluation process internally, including feedback about the value of the role and the person from all the people who interviewed the candidate. We publish all that feedback, as well as the suggestion/reasoning of our pay trustees (a group of people who use that feedback to try to place the candidate on our pay scale) None of those factors are why someone is worth $X salary. You say I'm worth $X.…
> You say I'm worth $X. I go get a job offer for $Y. If $Y > $X, you were mistaken.
Not at all. Company A may value you at $X, and company B may value you at $Y, and they may both be right.